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Traité du Verbe, Avec Avant-dire de Stephane Mallarme

Ghil, René [Stéphane Mallarmé]

Paris: Chez Giraud, 1886. First edition. 4to, 30 pp, printed wraps. Inscribed by Ghil to one Edmond Gagelle at the title page.

First separate edition of this rare collection of short prose pieces by the Symbolist writer Ghil, a one-time disciple of Mallarmé, who provides the foreward and afterword. The works had previously only appeared in the obscure Belgian journal La Basoche. Ghil's work was largely dismissed in his lifetime, and has gained little attention since, but his remarkable attempt at an ideal poetry, based on scientific principles and with correspondences to music and color, is one of the more unique avant-garde projects of his time.

The foreward by Mallarmé is cited as an important development in his thinking by Anna Balakian - "One of the shortest prafeces in French Literature is Mallarmé’s on René Ghil’s Traité du Verbe. It has, however, a pivotal position; it emerges as the kernel of his poetics and at the same time places Mallarmé’s views of poetry outside and beyond that of the members of the Symbolist Cénacle..."

Disbound, with darkening, chipping, creasing, and foxing, fair only but complete in its pieces, and rare in any condition. Item #27848